Breaths, Heartbeats and Time

It was probably the fourth day. Possibly the fifth.

My alarm clock rang — as it did every day — at 6:30am. By alarm clock, I mean the special sunrise simulation clock that suggests you get out of bed via the metallic sounds of recorded birds and a blinding full spectrum light that pierces the thickest sleep. Buzzing, these days, was for olds.

As I do each morning, I spent the first thirty minutes on myself. I mapped out my day, I thought about things I would like to write about if I ever got the time. I don’t get up. I stay in bed. Sometimes, I go back to sleep. Other times, I watch TV on my iPad. One thing I never do is check email.

I cherish those thirty minutes. Time to myself in a world where I am time poor but request rich has more value than any information or communication. Even the news that my sister went into labor didn’t break those thirty minutes.

My world is defined in those thirty minutes. And while the definition may shift and change over time, it’s my world to define; it’s my responsibility to get it right. At least one piece of it right.

It was definitely the sixth day.

For one of the first times in my life, I took an extended vacation. The last time I was away from work this long, I was getting my cervical spine repaired and I was regulated to the couch and medical marijuana. My focus was only not get addicted to the pain killers or fall down and die. The first thing worried me more since I am as nimble as a ninja gazelle in a china shop with a bull. Or that’s what the medical marijuana told me.

It was 10am on that sixth day. I had done my morning me time, worked out a bit (at least as much as one does with a repaired spine), meditated a bit, when the realization came over me … I have a dearth of time.

There are three finite resources in our lifes: breaths, heartbeats, and time. We cannot make more. We cannot share it, buy it or even give it away. You cannot even save it. It cannot give two fucks about you.

You can only trade it. One thing for another. Working out instead of watching tv. Writing instead of reading. Even multitasking is a combination of trading singular focus for many small foci shoved into the same time block combined with the lie that we are doing more, just not as well.

On the sixth day of my vacation, I spent time on time. As time is never wasted, only experienced, it must be optimized. Yes, I got nerdy on time.

I created a short list — no more than 5 items — of how I wanted to spend my time. Not out of responsibility or desire, but out of maximization of ROI. Yes, I did a cost benefit analysis on my time.

What I expected — a litany of finger pointing at the TV, internet, randomness, and myself — didn’t happen.

What did happen was I began to list out experiences that I wanted to, well, experience. Writing a book, traveling through Japan, different roles at different companies doing different things, kids, and maybe even building another company.

I started to think about the things I was choosing to do rather than smoothing the path to the experiences I had listed. Social Media. Fear. Taking the easy path. Caring more about the reaction to the output, than the output itself. Disorganization.

The list got long. I worked on it for most of the next three days. I literally wept when I completed it. I had created difficulties in my life for the sake of making my life difficult.

And I was done.

Top of the list was things that stole moments through out the day. Things that when I was “bored,” I did. Things that were comfortable and consistent and reliable.

If my past addictions have taught me anything, they have taught me that I don’t do anything half way. I am as binary as midnight and noon. If I wanted to change, it had to start with stopping.

For the next thirty days, I am going to test this out. I am removing time stealers. Easy to say; hard to do. I will slip (I still eat a donut every Saturday), but mostly, I am going to trade the time stolen for creative pursuits. I am taking a couple of writing classes. I am going to write more across different mediums, including this one.

Visual mediums, and people, have always percolated my imagination, and more than anything, I need to spend time in the worlds I create.

Time. Fucking hell. Who knew that it would be so important?